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Rainy Night in the Bell Tent

by: The Dongas Tribe (and friends)

MRW and Howie

Publication date: 2005-10-14 00:00:00
Usage: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
Topics: Brittany, Breton, Breton folk, Breton folkdance, Breton traditional, traditional Breton, French, French traditional, traditional French, French folk, French folkdance, Corsica, Corsican, Corsican folk, Corsican traditional, traditional Corsican, traditional, Ukraine, Ukranian, traditional Ukranian, Ukranian traditional, Ukranian folk, Armenian, traditional Armenian, Armenia, Armenian traditional, Armenian folk, Ireland, Irish, Irish folk, Irish trad, Irish traditional, traditional Irish, Wales, Welsh, Welsh folk, Welsh traditional, traditional Welsh, Donga, Dongas, Donga tribe, Dongas tribe, Cornwall, organic, lofi, lo-fi, folkdance, free psych-folk, free psychfolk, free psych folk, drone, droning, psychedelic, psychedelia, Celtic, tribal, mandola, saz, baglama, melodeon
Item Size: 129.7M

A selection of folk tunes from Brittany, France, Corsica, Ukraine, Armenia, Ireland, Wales, etc. recorded spontaneously by the nomadic Dongas Tribe in a bell tent in woods at Ventongimps near Perranzabuloe in Cornwall one rainy night in autumn 1997. This is the best recording known to exist of the Cornwall-period Dongas.

Notes

Ruth – fiddle
Jo – wooden flute, melodeon, recorder
Stef – mandolin (and possibly bouzouki)
Inge – mandolin, percussion
Matthew – saz (and possibly percussion)
Howie – percussion (and possibly octave mandola)
Colin – percussion
Josh – percussion

This was originally recorded onto high-quality chrome cassette via Howie's professional-quality handheld cassette recorder. Unfortunately, that tape either got lost in the post, or is languishing amongst Funkey's millions of tapes in Sint-Niklaas. However, Ruth did make a copy (not brilliant quality) shortly after the original recording, which remained with our friend Stevie P in Glastonbury until recently.

These second generation recordings have been tidied up with a bit of digital processing and a few little splices.

Colin, Ruth, Inge, Jo and Matthew playing at Roskilly's on The Lizard, probably summer 1998
The first tune, (according to Pierre Amadio) is "La Valse à Ollu", or a variation on it.

Stef taught everyone the three Corsican tunes he picked up when visiting Corsica (he's half Corsican).

We're not sure where the two mazurkas are from (we used to refer to them as "Sonny's Mazurka" and the "Fubu Mazurka").

At the time we believed track 8 to be Transylvanian, but we've since been reliably informed that it's "Jump at the Sun" by John Kirkpatrick. The Tofu Love Frogs used to sing a daft song about Mother Teresa to this melody.

"Ambee Dagez" is traditional Armenian. Selena introduced us to that one a few weeks earlier.

"The Man in the Brown Hat" is a tune we knew via Blowzabella (Cliff Stapleton – who some of us would end up playing with – wrote it).

The hanter dro and an dro's are from Brittany.

Tracks 13–17 are all traditional Irish. Inge and Matthew had been travelling around Ireland for some time prior to this autumn, and had been playing a lot of Irish tunes (which Ruth and Jo also knew). "Farewell to Erin" is a bit rushed and sloppy, but worth including in the collection. [Definitely worth including, it turns out, as this has since been put to perfect use as the soundtrack to an amusing little Finnish computer game called "Druid Soccer" (which involves megalithic monuments!)...the hecticness of our playing is perfectly suited to lend an appropriate cartoonish zaniness to the proceedings.]

If you have any more accurate information about any of these tunes, please get in touch

The rain on the bell tent can be heard at the beginnings and ends of some pieces (and throughout the last piece, which is just Jo playing wooden flute). As Stevie P pointed out, this makes it sound rather like old vinyl – nice.

Josh can be heard jokingly asking "Has anyone got a djembe I can play?" at the beginning of one piece. Stef can be heard asking "What's the dance to that one, then?" at the end of the penultimate piece.

Ruth ended up playing in a group called "Zabalka" with Rory McLeod some years later. Jo became part of Red Dog Green Dog. Stef became part of The Mordekkers in West Wales. Inge started a band called "Farat el Moultazov" in Southern France. Matthew was involved in setting up an improvisation collective in Exeter called Children of the Drone, and continued occasionally recording with Inge as Ail Fionn. Colin took up the hurdy-gurdy and carried on doing his Colin thing in rural France. Josh launched a career as a costumed one-hand-whistle-and-drum-playing minstrel. Howie turned to Jesus.

The bell tent, in Bosahan Woods near Constantine, our next camp after Ventongimps (Colin is visible)

The Spring – Matthew's 'audio blog' contact: mwatkins@maths.ex.ac.uk

Addeddate: 2005-10-14 01:42:02
Identifier: rainy_night_in_the_bell_tent
Run time: 59:20
Source: analog cassette (2nd generation)
Taped by: Howie and MRW
Type: sound
Year: 2005